Cassone

Last updated

Some cassoni, in the Museo Bardini, Florence Sala del crocifisso, cassoni dipinti.JPG
Some cassoni, in the Museo Bardini, Florence
Florentine cassone from the 15th century (M.A.N., Madrid) Arca de la Batalla de Anghiari (M.A.N. 51936) 01.jpg
Florentine cassone from the 15th century (M.A.N., Madrid)
Walnut cassone in the form of an Antique sarcophagus, Rome, 16th century (Walters Art Museum) Italian - "Cassone" - Walters 6535.jpg
Walnut cassone in the form of an Antique sarcophagus, Rome, 16th century (Walters Art Museum)

A cassone (plural cassoni) or marriage chest is a rich and showy Italian type of chest, which may be inlaid or carved, prepared with gesso ground then painted and gilded. Pastiglia was decoration in low relief carved or moulded in gesso, and was very widely used. The cassone ("large chest") was one of the trophy furnishings of rich merchants and aristocrats in Italian culture, from the Late Middle Ages onward. The cassone was the most important piece of furniture of that time. It was given to a bride and placed in the bridal suite. It would be given to the bride during the wedding, and it was the bride's parents' contribution to the wedding.

Contents

There are in fact a variety of different terms used in contemporary records for chests, and the attempts by modern scholars to distinguish between them remain speculative, and all decorated chests are today usually called cassoni, which was probably not the case at the time. For example, a forziere probably denoted a decorated chest with a lock. [1]

Since a cassone contained the personal goods of the bride, it was a natural vehicle for painted decoration commemorating the marriage in heraldry and, when figural painted panels began to be included in the decor from the early quattrocento , flattering allegory. The side panels offered a flat surface for a suitable painting, with subjects drawn from courtly romance or, much less often, religious subjects. By the 15th century subjects from classical mythology or history became the most popular. Great Florentine artists of the 15th century were called upon to decorate cassoni, though as Vasari complains, by his time in the 16th century, artists thought such work beneath them. Some Tuscan artists in Siena and Florence specialized in such cassone panels, which were preserved as autonomous works of art by 19th century collectors and dealers, who sometimes discarded the cassone itself. From the late 1850s, neo-Renaissance cassoni were confected for dealers like William Blundell Spence, Stefano Bardini or Elia Volpi in order to present surviving cassone panels to clients in a more "authentic" and glamorous presentation. [2]

A typical place for such a cassone was in a chamber at the foot of a bed that was enclosed in curtains. Such a situation is a familiar setting for depictions of the Annunciation or the Visitation of St. Anne to the Virgin Mary. A cassone was largely immovable. In a culture where chairs were reserved for important personages, often pillows scattered upon the floor of a chamber provided informal seating, and a cassone could provide both a backrest and a table surface. The symbolic "humility" that modern scholars read into Annunciations where the Virgin sits reading upon the floor, perhaps underestimates this familiar mode of seating.

At the end of the 15th century, a new classicising style arose, and early Renaissance cassoni of central and northern Italy were carved and partly gilded, and given classical décor, with panels flanked by fluted corner pilasters, under friezes and cornices, or with sculptural panels in high or low relief. Some early to mid-sixteenth-century cassoni drew their inspiration from Roman sarcophagi (illustration, right). By the mid-sixteenth century Giorgio Vasari could remark on the old-fashioned cassoni with painted scenes, examples of which could be seen in the palazzi of Florentine families. [3]

A cassone that has been provided with a high panelled back and sometimes a footrest, for both hieratic and practical reasons, becomes a cassapanca ("chest-bench"). Cassapanche were immovably fixed in the main public room of a palazzo, the sala or salone. They were part of the immobili ("unmoveables"), perhaps even more than the removable glazed window casements, and might be left in place, even if the palazzo passed to another family.

In the east part of Emilia Romagna, the "cassone" term is also used to describe a local food, which is a round flat bread cooked on a special pan called "testo".

Notes

  1. Ajmar-Wollheim, Marta; Dennis, Flora, At home in Renaissance Italy, 2006, Victoria and Albert Museum, ISBN   1-85177-488-2, ISBN   978-1-85177-488-3
  2. Ellen Callmann, "William Blundell Spence and the Transformation of Renaissance Cassoni". The Burlington Magazine141 (June 1999:338–348).
  3. Vasari, Le vite de' piu eccellenti pittori..., ed. G. Milanesi, vol. II p 148, noted in Ellen Callmann 1999:339 and note 7.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Palazzo Vecchio</span> Town hall of Florence, Italy

The Palazzo Vecchio is the town hall of Florence, Italy. It overlooks the Piazza della Signoria, which holds a copy of Michelangelo's David statue, and the gallery of statues in the adjacent Loggia dei Lanzi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chest (furniture)</span> Type of furniture

A chest is a form of furniture typically of a rectangular structure with four walls and a removable or hinged lid, used for storage, usually of personal items. The interior space may be subdivided.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Casket (decorative box)</span> Small box to store beauty items

A casket is a decorative box or container that is usually smaller than a chest and is typically decorated. In recent centuries they are often used as boxes for jewelry, but in earlier periods they were also used for keeping important documents and many other purposes. Many ancient caskets are reliquaries, for both Buddhist and Christian relics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Palazzo Medici Riccardi</span> Renaissance palace located in Florence, Italy

The Palazzo Medici, also called the Palazzo Medici Riccardi after the later family that acquired and expanded it, is a Renaissance palace located in Florence, Italy. It is the seat of the Metropolitan City of Florence and a museum.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Taddeo di Bartolo</span> Italian painter (c. 1363–1422)

Taddeo di Bartolo, also known as Taddeo Bartoli, was an Italian painter of the Sienese School during the early Renaissance. His biography appears in the Vite of Giorgio Vasari, who claims that Taddeo was the uncle of Domenico di Bartolo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hope chest</span> Piece of furniture traditionally used by unmarried young women

A hope chest, also called dowry chest, cedar chest, trousseau chest, or glory box, is a piece of furniture once commonly used by unmarried young women to collect items, such as clothing and household linen, in anticipation of married life.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Francesco Bacchiacca</span> Italian painter

Francesco d'Ubertino Verdi, called Bachiacca. He is also known as Francesco Ubertini, il Bacchiacca (1494–1557). He was an Italian painter of the Renaissance whose work is characteristic of the Florentine Mannerist style.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spalliera</span> Painting mounted into furniture or panelling

A spalliera is a decorated backboard mounted on a wall, often behind a cassone, or as a headboard to a bed. It is usually made out of wood and embellished with decorative aspects such as intricate carving or painting, and is gilded as well. They were common in Renaissance Tuscany.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Château d'Écouen</span> Château in Écouen, France

The Château d'Écouen is an historic château in the commune of Écouen, some 20 km north of Paris, France, and a notable example of French Renaissance architecture. Since 1975, it has housed the collections of the Musée national de la Renaissance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jacopo da Sellaio</span> Italian painter

Jacopo del Sellaio (1441/42–1493) was an Italian painter of the early Renaissance, active in his native Florence. His real name was Jacopo di Arcangelo. He worked in an eclectic style based on those of Botticelli, Filippino Lippi, and Domenico Ghirlandaio. The nickname Sellaio derives from the profession of his father, a saddle maker.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Giovanni dal Ponte</span> Italian painter

Giovanni dal Ponte was a Florentine minor master painter of the late-Gothic period, known as one of the greatest minor masters contemporary to Masaccio. He is known by Giorgio Vasari as dal Ponte, a name derived from the location of his studio at the Piazza di Santo Stefano a Ponte. Many other documents cite his name as Giovanni di Marco. After joining the Arte dei Medici e degli Speziali in 1410 and the Compagnia di S Luca in 1413, dal Ponte opened his studio in the late 1420s and hired Florentine painter Smeraldo di Giovanni as his assistant. Smeraldo was hired after dal Ponte was imprisoned in 1424 due to failure to repay his debts, with the intention that Smeraldo would manage the logistical aspects of the workshop in addition to his artwork. Dal Ponte used his craftsmanship to create not only Panel paintings, but also frescoes and decorations for small objects. Dal Ponte's work is considered to be of the Late Gothic style, though he assimilated the stylistic preferences of his contemporaries; Lorenzo Monaco, Masaccio, and Lorenzo Ghiberti served as his primary influences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Biagio d'Antonio</span> Italian painter

Biagio d’Antonio Tucci was an Italian Renaissance painter active in Florence, Faenza and Rome.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Francesco Pesellino</span> Italian painter (c. 1422–1457)

Francesco Pesellino, also known as Francesco di Stefano, was an Italian Renaissance painter active in Florence. His father was the painter Stefano di Francesco, and his maternal grandfather was the painter Giuliano Pesello (1367–1446), from whose name the diminutive nickname "Pesellino" arose. After the death of his father in 1427, the young Pesellino went to live with his grandfather whose pupil he became. Pesellino remained in his grandfather's studio until the latter's death, when he began to form working partnerships with other artists, such as Zanobi Strozzi and Fra Filippo Lippi. He married in 1442, and probably joined the Florentine painters' guild in 1447. In the following years he made for reputation with small, highly-finished works for domestic interiors, including religious panels for private devotional use and secular subjects for pieces of furniture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stefano Bardini</span>

Stefano Bardini (1836–1922) was an Italian connoisseur and art dealer in Florence who specialized in Italian paintings, Renaissance sculpture, cassoni and other Renaissance and Cinquecento furnishings and architectural fragments that came on the market during the urban regeneration of Florence in the 1860s and 70s.

<i>Desco da parto</i> Italian painted object

A painted desco da parto was an important symbolic gift on the occasion of a successful birth in late medieval and Early Modern Florence and Siena. The surviving painted deschi represented in museum collections were commissioned by elite families, but inventories show that birth trays and other special birth objects like embroidered pillows were kept long after the successful birth in families of all classes: when Lorenzo de' Medici died, the inventory shows that the desco da parto given by his father to his mother, Lucrezia Tornabuoni, at her lying-in, was hanging in his private quarters to the day of his death.

Italian Baroque interior design refers to high-style furnishing and interior decorating carried out in Italy during the Baroque period, which lasted from the early 17th to the mid-18th century. In provincial areas, Baroque forms such as the clothes-press or armadio continued to be used into the 19th century.

Italian Renaissance interior design refers to interior decorations, furnishing and the decorative arts in Italy during the Italian Renaissance period.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pastiglia</span> Low relief decoration

Pastiglia, an Italian term meaning "pastework", is low relief decoration, normally modelled in gesso or white lead, applied to build up a surface that may then be gilded or painted, or left plain. The technique was used in a variety of ways in Italy during the Renaissance. The term is mostly found in English applied to gilded work on picture frames or small pieces of furniture such as wooden caskets and cassoni, and also on areas of panel paintings, but there is some divergence as to the meaning of the term between these specialisms.

<i>Cervara Altarpiece</i> Panel paintings by Gerard David

The Cervara Altarpiece or Cervara Polyptych was an oil-on-oak-panel altarpiece painted by the Flemish painter Gerard David early in the 16th century for the high altar of Cervara Abbey in Liguria, Italy.

<i>Life of Esther</i> Painting series by Sandro Botticelli

Life of Esther or Scenes from the Story of Esther is the title of a series of six panel paintings by the Italian Renaissance painters Sandro Botticelli and Filippino Lippi, showing scenes from the story of Esther and produced in the 1470s. They originally decorated the sides of a pair of cassoni or marriage chests, the two long panels on the fronts, and the smaller ones on the ends. They are now split between five museums in Europe and Canada.

References